Jesus healed an invalid in John 5, and the setup to the miracle went like this: “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years” (John 5:2–5).
That’s a very specific number of years. In the Gospels, we’re not normally told how many years someone has dealt with a particular malady. When John tells us this number, he doesn’t even round it to the nearest ten (“about forty years”). He says the man was an invalid for thirty-eight years.
Now maybe that number signifies nothing more than those years for that individual. But this number appears in the Gospel of John, which is known to use numbers in very careful ways. For instance: there are seven “I am” claims, there are seven miracles of Jesus before the cross, in 6:13 there were twelve baskets of bread fragments, and in 21:11 the disciples catch 153 fish (and I’ve argued elsewhere that the 153 fish is a number that means something).
John’s careful and symbolic employment of numbers should, at least, invite us to ask the question, “Does the thirty-eight years in John 5:5 have any discernible significance?” Since the other numbers—like seven or twelve or 153—have Old Testament background that illuminates them, we should consider whether “thirty-eight” has any Old Testament background that illuminates it.
The number “thirty-eight” is used three times in the Old Testament.
1 Kings 16:29: “In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel, and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years.”
2 Kings 15:8: “In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah king of Judah, Zechariah the son of Jeroboam reigned over Israel in Samaria six months.”
Deuteronomy 2:14: “And the time from our leaving Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the brook Zered was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation, that is, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them.”
The two occurrences of “thirty-eight” in 1-2 Kings are not about significant events in Israel’s history. On both occasions, the “thirty-eight” is referenced so that we can know how long one king of Judah had been reigning when another king came to power over Israel.
Deuteronomy 2:14, however, is very significant. The period of Israel’s wilderness punishment was thirty-eight years. When you add the months prior to the rebellion in Numbers 13–14, you get forty years from the exodus to the promised land. Nevertheless, the “thirty-eight years” is an important historical note. This number for the wilderness years appears in the Old Testament only in Deuteronomy 2:14.
After thirty-eight years of wilderness punishment, the Israelites were going to enter the promised land. When we read in John 5:5 about a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, perhaps we are meant to recall the thirty-eight years of Israel’s wilderness journey. There’s no more compelling Old Testament reference in the background.
There are New Testament scholars who are unconvinced of any symbolic significance to the “thirty-eight years” in John 5:5.
J. Ramsey Michaels (in his commentary on John) says, “Here again commentators have looked for allegorical meanings, but again unconvincingly. More likely, this is a tradition handed down from the time the story was first heard, remembered, and retold, serving here to heighten the impression of a knowledgeable (if not omniscient) author-narrator.”1
D. A. Carson (in his commentary on John) says, “Some have seen in these ‘thirty-eight years’ an allusion to the thirty-eight unnecessary years the Israelites spent in the desert, banished there because of their fear and unbelief at the first approach to the promised land (Dt. 2:14). This interpretation is unlikely: there is no interlocking symbolism between the two events.”2
Raymond Brown (in his commentary on John) says, “The suggestion that the number is symbolic, e.g., the 38 years of wandering in Deut ii 14, is unnecessary.”3
Craig Keener is more open to an Old Testament allusion. He writes, “Given the possible exodus allusion in the ‘thirty-eight years’ (5:5), the ‘troubling of the waters’ (John 5:7) might suggest an allusion to the exodus; the same language appears in Ps 77:16 (76:17 LXX), which depicts the time when God led his people ‘like a flock’ by Moses and Aaron, and that entire Psalm assures its hearers that the God who acted in the past exodus would act again (Ps 77:8–15).”4
The old exodus was through the waters. The man in John 5:5 is not delivered through the waters of the pool at Bethesda. Jesus is leading a new exodus, and the deliverance comes through him. He tells the invalid, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk” (John 5:8).
Jesus later found the healed man in the temple and said, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14). This language may suggest that the man’s physical condition was the result of divine punishment. While not all sickness is necessarily the result of a person’s sin, someone’s sin can lead to discipline or judgment in the form of illness.
If the above suggestions are correct, what we have is a man who had been rebelling against God, and this led to thirty-eight years of a particular condition. Recalling the history of Israel, their rebellion against God in Numbers 13–14 led to a particular state of wandering for thirty-eight years.
In the four Gospels, Jesus had come to the promised land which was still in spiritual exile. He had come to lead the meek and lowly to new creation. He had come to bring life to the dead, restoration to the broken, and forgiveness to the transgressors.
The physical miracles were signs of God’s inbreaking kingdom. After thirty-eight long years, the invalid in John 5 encounters the Lord Jesus. Though physically lame, the invalid was a spiritual wanderer. By the pool of Bethesda he beheld the Lamb of God who had come to bring people to a greater inheritance—eternal life and new creation.
We should understand the man’s “thirty-eight year” condition as certainly historical and possibly symbolic as well. If there is symbolism—or an Old Testament background—to the number thirty-eight, there’s no more likely background than the “thirty-eight years” of Israel’s wilderness wandering before entering their inheritance.
J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, NICNT (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 291.
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 242.
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 207.
Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, vol. 1 (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 638.